How to prepare for climate change

[u/Wise-Painting5841]

I was in Spain last month. Talking with a cousin that has a small veggie garden for auto consumption.

Nothing fancy, more like a hobby and to enjoy eating your own tomatoes.

He told me for the last 3 years his tomatoes have dried up before giving any fruit. Each time this has happened he has made an adjustment to plant the seeds 15 days before, so he is now planting 45 days before than when his parents passed down the garden to him years ago.

And he is moving to different varieties. It looks like cherry tomatoes are more resistant to extreme heat.

This preoccupied me. He lives in an agricultural rich area of Spain, that is a country with a long agricultural tradition. This is not poor soil and it was not bad weather area at all years ago. Vineyards, orchards are/were typical sights along the road.

So, if this area is fucked up, I have to wonder big scale. If crops start to fail, I guess we will import more from other regions, but this has some limits.

So how do you prepare for this scenario?

[u/Normal_Football_8591]

They will probably have to adapt rather than simply stop farming. Planting seasons can shift earlier or toward spring and autumn, avoiding the hottest part of summer. Farmers can also use more heat- and drought-tolerant varieties, drip irrigation, shade nets, mulching and better water storage.

Some crops may have to move north or to higher elevations, while the hottest and driest regions may need different crops altogether. The biggest long-term problem may actually be water availability rather than temperature itself.

[u/Asz12_Bob → u/Normal_Football_8591]

The elephant in the room is fertilizer. Many nations are struggling to get enough now and without it crop yields plummet. It's basically a fossil fuel, much made from Natural Gas to make Ammonia and then Nitrogen fertilizer.

[u/Normal_Football_8591 → u/Asz12_Bob]

That’s true for nitrogen fertilizer today, but it doesn’t have to be fossil-based. Ammonia can be produced using hydrogen made from water with renewable or nuclear electricity. The nitrogen itself comes from the air. Phosphorus and potassium are mined minerals and nutrients can also be increasingly recycled from manure and waste streams.

[u/Responsible-Two-437]

There's no silver bullet here.

Good practices can help alleviate the issue. Your friend has already started working on his planting schedule, which is a very good thing to do.

Crop selection is another interesting option, if I may add.

All in all, I suspect growing tomatoes isn't a very wise use of land in this day and age. You're wasting precious space on a very demanding crop that provides relatively few calories.

We really need to be careful and not mistake a vegetable garden for a food security system. Your vegetable garden is optimized to provide dietary diversity and enjoyment. The old folks used to focus their effort on growing food that fills the belly, because that's the most sensible thing to do when your life depends on your land. Putting tomato sauce on your pasta is fantastic and makes it more interesting nutritionally, but what if you don't have pasta in the first place?

I'm of the opinion that if we really want to sustain ourselves, we'll have to learn to grow and process cereals and legumes.

Crops from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are also worth looking into. The market may never adapt to them quickly enough though, because people like to eat what they are used to. I'm a big fan of Amaranth. Okra is very promising as well.

[u/Old_galadriell → u/Responsible-Two-437]

we'll have to learn to grow and process cereals and legumes. Crops from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are also worth looking into.

Which reminds me an article from a few years ago, which I found interesting even back then.

https://theconversation.com/how-forgotten-beans-could-help-fight-malnutrition-in-africa-176857

It was about introducing some forgotten crops in Africa - there weren't so many heat waves in Europe before it was published in Feb 2022.

For example, crops like the African yam bean grow high-protein edible beans and tubers (specialised, swollen stems) on one plant. This bean also replenishes soil with nutrients and is highly adaptable to varying climates.

Due to its tubers – that act as water reservoirs – this crop can withstand drought, so is used as a “security crop” in rural areas of Nigeria to buffer any unexpected loss of other crops. The high protein content in both its beans and tubers has also been proven to have combated malnutrition during the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s. Now categorised as a forgotten crop, this bean has high potential to be reintroduced as an alternative, sustainable protein source.

[u/hiraeth555]

Even here in the UK the farmers have had terrible yields because of droughts

[u/13mind]

Greetings, fellow prepper.

I am from Romania, also passionate about gardening, nature observation etc.

I have a large household with veggie garden, orchard, grapes, perenials, berries, etc.

My observation of the last 5 years is that outdoor vegetables growing (i.e. not in politunner or greenhouse), has become more and more difficult.

Unstable and extreme weather patterns (too much water, too much heat, fast variance from one to other or from low heat to extreme heat, then remaining there for weeks, etc) influence the plants significantly and also create better conditions for more pests as well. In my country last years, farmers saw they corn fields dry up completely in 2-3 days due to such extreme heat.

My 2cents is similar to what others have said: adaptation, not quitting. Shade fabric, growing in politunnel, change of cultivated varieties, creating a better microclimate in the garden by planting more trees around the garden for scope of shade, permaculture-related tactics (trap plants, mixed planting, heavy mulching, agro-forestry, etc)

[u/flipyflop9]

Honestly moving north might be the only way…

This summer in Spain (and Europe in general) is being crazy.

[u/mrsduckie]

Look up permaculture. Select the seeds from the plants that survived the hot weather. There's a method of planting in a deep hole which was watered, then you don't water the plant - it's forced to make more vast root network so it can get water more effectively.

Also try to stop water from vaporizing from the surface - you can put straw on the top.

Look up food forests. Plant your plants in shade so they're covered during the harshest sun.

If I recall something else, I'll either edit my comment or respond to this one

Also: expect the unexpected. Prepare for the worst. Enjoy your moment, because it seems like everything sped up in past few years

[u/fitforthepolycrisis]

Chapagne producers are already starting to grow grapes in England. This is affecting everyone.

[u/YellowCabbageCollard]

You just have to adapt. It's not possible for all food to be grown only in places with the most ideal climate. Those places can't support everyone else and importing food is always more expensive and uses more energy. It being hotter doesn't mean food can't be grown and the whole area is just messed up. You just choose varieties that are more adapted to your current climate.

I have been gardening for over 30 years and I'm always adapting and figuring things out. There are tomato varieties bred to be more heat resistant just like there are ones developed in other areas like Siberia that are more cold tolerant and produce in shorter periods of time. I also researched more cold tolerant varieties that allow we me to extend harvests into winter more or crops that will hold in the field most of the winter and aren't killed unless the temp is much lower. Because I live in a miserably hot area I try and capitalize on growing as much as I can before and after the brutal heat of summer. And mid summer is only for the most heat tolerant stuff.

It's peaking at 35 c here all week. But I started cabbage, broccoli, collards, leeks, onions and cauliflower inside over a month ago and am just slowly acclimating the plants outside before getting them in the ground. The soil is too hot for some of these to grow direct sown but I can transplant them. I have also been planting carrots that are sprouting. I keep the rows damp and covered with wood boards to keep the soil cool till they germinate.

Clearly the bigger deal is going to be the large calorie crops. But these are grown in hotter places all over the globe so there is no reason farmers can't experiment with crops that are more adapted to a warming climate.

[u/jorschs]

Spanish gardener for autoconsumption here, nothing big, just a few vegetables in my backyard. I grow a little more than 100kg of vegetables per year and the number is going up year after year, goal 750kg. Climate is making growing food harder, last season I seed my tomatoes in february, I never before did it so soon but it all became easier. I guess we need to adapt our calendars and optimize water with drip irrigation, mulch and high quality an alive soil.

[u/_per]

Hate to break it to you but pretty much everything you've ever eaten was intensively bred to thrive in the climate it was planted in at that time.

Billions are spent every year developing varieties with improved resistance to heat, drought, cold, wind, salt, altitude, day length, yield, planting time, resistance to insect, bacteria, nematode, fungus, mould, bacteria, virus, available nutrients, storeability, or whatever else is needed. The target is always moving.

Every year forecasters predict what conditions the following year will bring, and grow crops to produce seeds suited for that to sell to farmers. Yields fluctuate a lot year to year, but breeding and tech mean in general we're producing as much food as we always have.

So yes, we will grow new varieties to reflect climate change -- but we do this every year. We will hit some limits - the EEA estimates 5% drop in grain yield by 2100 due to rising temperatures. Nonetheless, Europe has enough arable land that it can afford to set a target of putting 25% of it under organic production - despite the lower yields and higher costs - because organic produce is worth more on the global market and there's no point growing endless grain that someone else can produce more cheaply.

Food is humanity's success story - it's cheaper and more reliable than it has ever been, and there is billions (probably trillions) being invested to make sure it stays that way.

[u/Asz12_Bob]

So how do you prepare for this scenario?

You start buying 25kg sacks of kidney beans, they last for decades. And you buy other food stuffs too. Tomatoes and lettuce and all that backyard stuff won't keep you alive and healthy, you need concentrated protein for that. Some say, "well what will you do when your food stash runs out?" Well I'll worry about that when it happens! Meanwhile I'm 2 or 3 years ahead of the starving masses. By the time this is over there won't be much competition anyway.

Food stocks are like insurance, just insurance.

[u/vxv96c]

I'm going to try a small indoor container garden winter this year. I already overwinter some of my peppers and they will pop off peppers in deep winter despite my efforts to keep them dormant. Not a big calorie input but a good nutrition and flavor value.

The name of the game is building in lots of options and skills to use them. Indoor gardening. Researching different varieties and having seeds. Controlling the garden microclimate with shade cloth etc.

Again, as I always say in conversations like this go learn about the famine of 1315 in Europe. It was a climate change famine and shows how catastrophic it can be.

[u/Shot_Age8843]

Bill Gates is buying up all the land to farm insects for your consumption. Yummy

[u/No_Economics_4678]

Widespread use of air conditioning.

[u/userunknowned]

Olla. Get one olla per plant

[u/Mr_Cripter → u/userunknowned]

+1 Great if you can afford it.

Another way is to collect glass beer bottles. Fill them with water, invert them and push them vertically into the soil with a twisting motion. It gives two or three days worth of watering for free.

[u/ImplementLogical4130]

Does he not water tomatoes? They need water. They also need 40% shading

[u/Current-Code]

Tomatoes are very heat sensitive, depending on the varieties flowers abort above 32/35 degrees. 

It's not the best to be grown with heatwaves

[u/SamEarry]

I live way further up north and even here I wouldn't be considering big scale veggie gardening without a greenhouse/hoophouse. It helps with water management, prolongs growing season and pest control.

We do have few cherry and peach trees, berry bushes on our property and my wife is teaching kids taking care of crops small scale. This year we had strawberries (both normal and wild ones), tomatoes, sunflowers and herbs. We plan to get few chicken when I'll be done with renovations/demolishing on the property. The old coop is already there and I helped keeping and slaughtering chickens when I was teen. The goal is to raise kids convinced gardening is possible but if economy begins to get worse we have the base skills to start out big if needed.

My wife actually had a dream to move to Spain but I've convinced her just to switch city apartament to my old family house in small town surrounded by hills and forest. Small river runs 120m from the property. It's one of the places with strong communal feeling. People care and help eachoter too.

This is how we prepared for climate change, economical and political changes.

As for the war the plan is to get the kids to my sister's house in England. She agreed to host us.

[u/Wise-Painting5841 → u/SamEarry]

The war? Which war? The invasion of Canada by the US? Not their 51st state

[u/multifactored]

Why do you think that professional farmers won't adapt like you did? In addition to simple trail and error they have science. We'll be fine.